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24 December 2010

My brother wasn't very fond of the existing seismograph apps for Android, so I made one according to his requirements (namely, one that shows all 3 axes at the same time).

The development was surprisingly easy -- I'll publish the source code soon -- but it was very straightforward and done within essentially 1 day.

It's probably a bit buggy and slow (at least on the Nexus S). I've tested it on a G1, Nexus One, T-Mobile MyTouch 3G slide, and Nexus S. I'll address the speed issue in the future. To give it a try, you can download it from the Android Market (Search for "Seismos")

I like the app... I don't have much talent for development... but I am always good for ideas. Here are some features I would like to see...

1. Event logging - imagine leaving the app running overnight, and then being able to go back in the morning and see events that occurred...

2. Alarms - have the app set off an alarm if some parameter is exceeded.

3. variable graph speeds - if you're really using it to monitor local seismicity, it might be nice to graph five or ten minutes on a screen at a time... but also have the ability to take some segment of the data and look at it in a different temporal frame so you could, for example, measure the time difference between the arrival of S and P waves. If you really wanted to get snazzy, you could select the points on the graph and have the app tell you how far away the event was based on the time delay between the arrival times of the different waves.

I don't know anything about the accelerometers in these devices... what is the frequency response?